There have been used a removable ink container in a stencil printer for the reason of easiness in handling or the like. The above-mentioned ink containers are generally installed in the system body to supply ink and then are removed when the ink is exhausted to be discarded or to be recycled. When a new expendable is mounted on the stencil printer thereafter, it becomes possible to continuously make print.
In the stencil printer using such an ink container, conventionally, any ink container has been able to be installed independently of the color of the ink in the ink container. Accordingly, when an ink container filled with ink different in color from the preceding ink is installed in the stencil printer, there has arisen a problem that the ink remaining in the printing drum mixes with the ink of a different color. In order to avoid such a problem, in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. 9 (1997)-100, there has been proposed a stencil printer where a rib which differs in shape by the color of the ink in the ink container is provided on the ink container, and an alarm is given when the rib on the newly installed ink container differs in shape from that on the preceding ink container stored in the stencil printer. Further, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-15916, there has been proposed a stencil printer where a rib which differs in location by the color of the ink in the ink container is provided on the ink container, the location of the rib on the ink container is detected by a switch on the stencil printer to determine whether the ink container is compatible in color with the printing drum in which it is installed, and when the ink container is incompatible in color with the printing drum, supply of ink to the printing drum is inhibited. Further, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-15916, in order to determine whether such an ink container is usable, there is proposed a method where a memory is provided on the printing drum, locations of the ribs on the usable ink containers are stored in the memory, and the location of the rib detected by the switch on the stencil printer is compared with the stored locations of the ribs. Further, as a method of storing location information on the location of the rib on the ink container in the memory provided on the printing drum, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-191630, there is proposed a method where the operator directly inputs the location information in the stencil printer in which the printing drum is installed.
However, when a rib the shape or the location of which differs by the color of ink therein is provided on the ink container as in Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. 9 (1997)-100 or Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-15916, to make ribs the shape or the location of which corresponds to the colors of ink becomes difficult and leads to increase in the cost as the number of kinds of colors of the ink increases. To avoid this problem, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-18507, there is proposed a method where a memory is provided on the ink container, color information on the color of ink in the ink container is stored in the memory and the color information stored in the memory is read out by the stencil printer to compare with color information of the printing drum which has been set in advance to determine whether the ink container is usable. However, also in this method, it is necessary to set in advance the color information in the stencil printer. When the operator sets the color information in the stencil printer as in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2001-191630, there arises a problem that input takes a lot of labor and becomes troublesome since the color information is a long character string depending on the code representing the color information.
In view of the foregoing observations and description, the primary object of the present invention is to provide a method of and a system for stencil printing and an ink container where, in methods of and systems for stencil printing and ink containers where a plurality of kinds of ink containers filled with ink of different colors are installed in a system body of a stencil printer and the ink in the ink container is supplied to a printing drum to carry out stencil printing, the color information can be easily set without necessity of the operator's direct input described above.